Directory of World Cinema

This new addition to the Directory of World Cinema series focuses on Italy and Italian cinema. While attractive to English speaking audiences, Italian cinema is not as culturally familiar as French or German cinema so this volume aims to provide an understanding of some of its better-known aspects as part of a wider filmic and cultural study. Covering a range of genres including silent spectacle, neo-realism, the spaghetti western and the giallo, this volume provides a comprehensive historical sweep of Italian cinema that encompasses prestige and popular cinema and provides different standpoints from which to consider the recurrent themes of realism, politics, spectacle, and the operatic that are found across Italian film culture.